Tonight I upgraded the Wordpress install on the site to version 2.8, resulted in about half-an-hour’s downtime while I untangled some merge conflicts the svn update to 2.8 combined with a move to the new Wordpress core svn server created. Interestingly the process went fine on my test server, but not on live; I’ll have to look into that. Anyway, apologies for any inconvenience the downtime may have caused you.
The 2.8 upgrade itself is almost entirely back-end, admin stuff, and shouldn’t have any impact on the visible site at all.
Well, Apple have come out with a new set of their (in)famous Mac/PC adverts. Surprisingly, this time round I find that I’m not paralysed with rage — just mildly disgusted and disappointed — and can write about them. Obviously, I should make it absolutely clear that, as adverts, I hate them. They’re patronising, confrontational and almost exclusively focus on perceived shortcomings of the opposition. But, as usual, they also make some claims that are generating some … debate around the net, and I thought — as user of both Macs and PCs without (I hope) any particular partisan leanings — I’d be well placed to pick them apart and give an objective review of their claims.
So without any further ado, here are my thoughts on the ads:
Legal Copy
This one is weird. I’m not quite sure what it’s trying to claim. That Apple machines don’t auto-update? Not true. That they don’t make you agree to click-through licenses when they do so? Also not true. About the only justifiable claim I could see here is that PCs tend to have a higher volume of auto-updates. But then the vast majority of them are Windows Defender updates that don’t have a click-through anyway. If I had to make a call, I’d say I do more clicking-through of licenses loaded with Legal Copy on my Mac than I do on my PC.
As far as I can see, this one is out-and-out dishonest.
Biohazard
This is probably the most contentious issue raised by the new (and old) PC/Mac ads. Apple have always insisted that Macs don’t have viruses, and that PCs are much more at risk of infection or being hacked. But then they do things like quietly post advice to run anti-virus software on their support forums, and PC users are understandably quick to jump on that as evidence that Macs aren’t so safe as Apple would have us believe. So what is the deal? Can a Mac really hang around in his casuals while nearby PCs are forced into isolation suits?
I’m going to say yes, but with a honking caveat. The fundamental truth of the issue is that there are almost no malware threats to the Mac; there have been about five actual cases of OSX malware making any headway at all in the wild. Compare that to the thousands of different PC malware threats released into the wild every month, to the tens of millions of PCs actively enlisted in botnets and the difference is so stark as to almost make Apple’s complacency justified. Almost.
The point is that the reason OSX is largely safe from malware attack is that there is no malware to be attacked by. It’s not that OSX is some magical virus-proof wonder-OS; it’s that it has too small a market-share to be worth a cyber-criminal’s time. If Apple continue to grow their market-share then sooner or later someone’s going to go for them, and I suspect that when that happens Apple, and the wider Mac community, will be woefully unprepared. There’ll be a few hectic months while everyone and his dog gets infected, Apple rush to get a fix out, play catchup for half a year and finally get on top of the problem. At least as much as any other platform has.
I’ve heard it suggested that telling people they don’t need virus protection is irresponsible because it means that when a threat does arise, people won’t be protected. I don’t really agree, for a couple of reasons. Firstly and most generally, I’m not convinced of the utility of anti-virus software on any platform. Consumers spend millions of dollars a year on Windows anti-virus software, and infection rates are still through the roof. Not only that but anti-virus software itself feels a lot like malware to me; it insinuates itself in every corner of your OS, gives you no control over what it does or when, often kills a machine’s performance, and all for what seems to be very little gain.
So given that anti-virus software is expensive, ineffective and detrimental to a machine’s day to day running, I fail to see how advocating it’s use on a platform that doesn’t currently need for it would be a responsible act. Especially given my second point, which is that no-one really know what Mac malware will look like when it appears, and until they do, how can anyone write software that has a fighting chance of countering it? It’s true that there are certain standard patterns to malware design, and by looking out for those existing software might get lucky, but my guess is that it’ll take six months after the first real wave of infections for the anti-virus companies to get up to speed on the sorts of exploits real malware takes advantage of and how to close the security holes.
Those six months should be plenty of time for Apple to reverse its message on viruses and get started on what will, in all likelihood, be a continent-sized pile of humble pie.
So, er, to get back to the point of the advert, is it true that Macs don’t have to worry about viruses? I’m going to say yes. But with caveats.
Stacks
Another odd one this. I get the feeling they were just trying to advertise that iPhoto has this neat new feature, but had to dress it up in their usual confrontational format to make it fit the ad-campaign. I mean, everything they say and imply is sort-of fair enough; iPhoto does ship with every Mac, and does have facial recognition, where an out-of-the-box PC is much more limited; it’s just that that’s not a particularly convincing point to make. Yeah, I guess organising photos by facial recognition is sort-of neat (when it works,) and it’s nice that it ships with Macs by default, but it’s not like the technology is unheard-of on the PC; there is free, easily available software (Picasa), that does it just as well.
This also is my favourite of these four new ads, because it highlights the overarching mistake Apple has made with the whole campaign; the PC is just a much more likeable character. It’s always true, but I think doubly so in this one.
So are the advert’s claims true? Yes, I think so, just also pointless.
Time Traveller
Appalling.
This sort of mud-slinging just pisses everyone off. It effectively says “PCs hang and crash all the time,” which, without justification or stats, is just the advertising equivalent of “PCs smell of poo!”
Having said that, I have to add: subjectively, my experience has been that my Macs have been more stable than my PCs. That’s not to say that I’m a typical case, or that my experience is necessarily representative; it’s just what I’ve noted over the past half-a-decade or so.
I’m not going to let my subjective experience colour my judgement on this one though; it’s just not justifiable to make these kinds of claims without support. False.
The End
So there you have it. I reckon roughly a 50% hit rate on truth, only one advert that actually has a convincing argument for buying a Mac, and even that one is so heavily caveated as to make the statement in isolation borderline dishonest.
It’s a real shame Apple insist on sticking to this advertising campaign; as far as I can see, all it does is alienate people. It’s doubly frustrating to me because Apple make great products that I really like. I love both my Macs, and while not everybody is going to like them, they are definitely good enough to sell on their own merits without needing to constantly bad-mouth the opposition. Now, if only Apple would actually tell people what those merits are.
From the Telegraph, about the Large Hadron Collider (emphasis mine, for the good bit):
Such is the angst that the American Nobel prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has even had death threats, said Prof Brian Cox of Manchester University, adding: “Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat.”
’nuff said.
So, Download Day 2008 is done, and they managed slightly over eight million downloads. That’s got to be enough to get them the record. I hope you all contributed.
Of course, there currently is no record for the most downloaded piece of software in a single day, so it’s not a hard one to set. The question is: how long will it stand? And will it be Firefox 4 that breaks it?
At some point in the next day or so Firefox 3 will be released, and they’re aiming to establish the record for the most downloaded piece of software within a single day of release.
Firefox 3 is a great browser; a noticeable improvement over version 2, and much better than any of Microsoft’s efforts (and I’m speaking as a web-user here, not just as an open-source advocate.) Even if you can’t see what all the fuss is about I’d encourage you to find out, and if you do it sooner rather than later, you’ll be part of a setting a world record.
So head over to their world record attempt site and grab the browser if it’s up by the time you read this, or pledge to do so if it’s not. It’ll be worth the few minutes of your time it’ll take.
Edit: It’s now live, you can go and grab it any time you like, and if you do so before 6PM BST tomorrow (18th June 2008) it’ll count for the record attempt.
Edit 2008÷06÷18 12:00: Three quarters of the way through, and just shy of six-million downloads. It’s a great figure already, and there’s still six hours to go. If you haven’t got hold of it yet, you haven’t missed the chance, and the servers all seem to be coping much better now.
So, by now everyone knows everything there is to know about the iPhone 2, so I don’t have much to add. I thought I’d mention how disappointed I am with it though.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, 3G is a big deal, and GPS is nice, but really… is that it?
The thing is, I don’t even know what I was hoping for; it just wasn’t this: the device that should have launched a year ago. I mean, they didn’t even up the storage to sweeten the deal.
Obviously, I’ll be getting one, due to the device’s only really compelling new feature: its price. O2’s somewhat aggressive pricing means that I can upgrade to one with double the storage and a better data connection for a scant £60, which, I suppose, is nothing to be complaining about.
In fact, maybe it’s churlish to be complaining at all; the iPhone was already a very desirable device — I certainly have yet to regret getting mine, even with only 8GB storage and 2G data — and increasing the spec at all while lowering the price isn’t something you’d usually complain about.
I just can’t help feeling that if the most exciting new feature is a price reduction, that the hype might be a little misplaced this time round.
OK; so right now I should be connecting my laptop to work’s VPN and checking up on a database I’m supposed to be diagnosing. Or, failing that, I should be tidying the flat, taking the rubbish out, or thinking about cooking my dinner. Or, failing that, I have some server maintenance, home directory housekeeping and CD ripping that I’m going to have to do eventually. But I’ve had an arse of a day and I’m feeling double-plus-lazy, so I’m going to write something instead. A quick look back in time tells me that I’d promised a second opinion on Mahalo once I’d had time to try it out, and since I’ve had time to try it out; here it is.
The first thing to say is that it’s no google, and I’m guessing they’re not even going for that market. I’ve found it to be close to useless for any search I carry out in the course of my working (as a software engineer) day. Pasting error codes into the search form just throws out a random selection of (usually biographical) pages. The google results at the bottom of the page are as good as you’d expect, but they’re slower to load and less obvious on the page than if I’d just used google in the first place. Searching for information on unix commands leaves it scratching it’s head in bewilderment, and, perhaps more seriously, even relatively well known computer software can leave it similarly speechless.
And it’s not just technical searches, it’s anything … overly specific. If I search for “cat lifespan” it gives me a few options for pages about cats, but nothing that is obviously going to tell me what I want to know. Google, by comparison, gives me the answer in it’s first link (although it’s second one is to a corporate website.) I guess expecting answers to specific questions is just too much to ask of the site’s human indexing engine.
That use of humans to build the entire index is both Mahalo’s biggest weakness and it’s greatest strength, since while I’ve been fairly disappointed in the breadth of subjects it is knowledgeable on, I’ve been hugely impressed with the quality of the results it does return. It’s hard to describe the joy of entering a search term and having the results come back, free from spam or noise, in a neatly categorised list of high quality links. I don’t know, re-reading that last sentence makes me wonder if I’m overreacting to this, but I can’t help it; it just reminds me of what the internet should be; a place where I can get access to information quickly and easily, without having to know the tricks of avoiding spammers and scammers, and without having to trawl through a mountain of ‘sponsored links’ or uninformed twaddle to get to the actual information. Of course, there’s a place for the uninformed twaddle as well (else I’d have to shut up shop,) but I don’t necessarily want a whole load of conspiracy theories polluting my screen when ‘m trying to research the moon landing.
This leads me to believe that the term “search engine” might be something of a misnomer. Certainly, you can search Mahalo, but it’s hardly it’s strongest suit; constructing a search term for a specific piece of information is rarely satisfactory, and that’s what people expect to be able to do with something called a “search engine”; it’s sort-of implied by the name. Where Mahalo really shines, conversely, is on sufficiently broad searches for well defined subjects (say, ‘Evolution’, or ‘Egypt’,) in those cases it’s hand-built nature and high quality put me more in mind of an index, or a guide than of a blind search algorithm. It’s like going back to Yahoo in the really old days, but with a somewhat-useful search feature, and links you actually want to follow. I guess there’s value in the term “search engine”; people know what it means, but I can’t help wondering if they might help differentiate themselves, as well as communicate their unique strengths, if they used a different term.
So, regardless of what it is, would I recommend Mahalo? Yes, absolutely, but not unreservedly. It’s not complete yet; that much is painfully clear in daily use, and I end up falling through to wikipediaor google at least as often as I get the answer from Mahalo, and there are types of searches that I don’t think it will ever be any good for (but then, I think there’s an argument for specialised search engines for many of those anyway.) For the searches it’s designed to handle, though, I think the value of it is well worth the initial inconvenience of having to contribute to the index myself. Suggesting links is quick and easy, and the more people that use it regularly and add the pages that it didn’t find for them, the sooner it’ll be complete and really useful.
So, go on — check it out. If you use firefox, you can configure it to use Mahalo as the default search engine, if not then it might be a little less convenient, but I think it’ll be worth the effort.
I’ve just been pointed at Mahalo (thanks Phil,) a new search engine. What sets it aside from the mainstream engines, is that it’s maintained by humans, rather than robots. Obviously, that raises concerns about it’s completeness, but it also means that you can trust its results not to be SEO-spam. In my limited testing, I’ve found it very good, with nicely presented, categorised and, most importantly, relevant results. It also provides results from the major robot-backed engines as well, in case they don’t have what you need indexed yet.
I doubt it’s going to unseat google any time soon, but I’m going to trial using it as my search engine of choice for a week or so, and see how it goes. I’ll report back when I’ve actually used it in anger.
So it turns out that the MacBook Air’s battery is a single discrete block (albeit a very thin one) that runs across the bottom of much of the case, and it’s relatively easy for an end user to swap out. Some people are calling this good news, but to me it just means that there really is no reason bar cost for not making the thing user swappable in the first place. I guess it might have meant weakening the case, but I’m not convinced; this is Apple, after all — I’m sure they could have come up with a neat battery removal mechanism if they had the will (I’m thinking a covered slot on one side of the device that you slide the battery into — like a really big PCMCIA card). I guess they’re just experimenting to see if people are prepared to put up with it. Lets hope people don’t an Apple fix this in the next version.
While we’re on the subject of those zany Bleimans, this is their video of the week, and my video of the … week _and a half_.